Noah Addis/The Star-LedgerWeequahic, celebrating its Central Group II state championship in 2006, is now part of the Super Essex Conference.

In high school football stadiums from Nutley to Newark, from Millburn to Verona, a simple announcement will be made over the loudspeakers before the new season begins this week.

"Today marks one of the first contests between two members of the Super Essex Conference," the message begins, and maybe for most fans, the meaning of that will go unnoticed.

It certainly won't for athletic officials around the state. This season is an experiment to see if the public and private schools can coexist on the playing fields, and Essex County is the test tube.

If the radical realignment in the new SEC works, then it can serve as a model for other counties around the northern part of the state and finally put ease to the friction between the two factions.

If it doesn't work? The governing body for high school sports could end up back at the drawing board -- or facing yet another movement to separate the public schools from their private counterparts.

"This is going to be the most important season in high school sports in a long time," said Joe Piro, the Nutley athletic director. "There are a lot of eyes on us in the state. There are a lot of eyes on us nationally."

Piro led the charge for separation two year ago, proposing legislation that fell eight votes short of shaking up the high school landscape. Instead, the close vote sent a message to the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association that something had to change.

That change is taking place now, and nowhere more prominently that Essex County. The SEC took the brilliant step of arranging its schools based on the strength of their respective sports, not solely on the size of their enrollment -- a move that might help solve the problem.

This is not a perfect solution. The realignment only shuffled the deck in some places, passing on the problems of one school to another. There are still major issues working out a plan in Bergen County, where parochial powers like Don Bosco Prep and Bergen Catholic still dominate in virtually every sport.

Don Bosco opens the season with California powerhouse De La Salle, then travels to Alabama to play another national power, Prattville High. Bosco is looking for national dominance now, but still insists on beating up on Clifton and Paterson Kennedy, which is unfair and unnecessary.

Bergen needed an extra year to sort through the issues, creating a temporary conference as a stopgap for this season. Eventually, the plan for what will be called the Big North might include a separate division for parochial schools, a source of friction in the county.

"I don't think there's a solution that will make everybody happy," Ridgewood athletic director Greg McDonald said, adding that the Big North is not currently considering a sports-specific model.

The public-private debate is not going away, but the state is desperate for a compromise and the plan the athletic directors in Essex County hatched is the best one we've seen.

Let the best play against the best, with room to make changes when a team struggles in a sport. There are downsides: The weakest team in the top division could be better than the stronger team in the second division. Is that team unfairly punished and left out of the state playoffs? And what about the scheduling nightmare of different teams from the same high school playing different schedules?

But overall, it provides the one thing every coach in every sport wants -- an even playing field.

"Nutley doesn't get anything out of going to East Orange to play them in softball," Piro said, "just like East Orange gets nothing out of playing Nutley in basketball.

"The worst thing that would happen is, after a year we say, 'Wow, we have to take another look at this.' I don't see that happening. I see us saying, 'We're going to be okay.'"

Steve Timko, the NJSIAA executive director, said no matter what happens, the state will look at the realignment at the end of the school year. Unlike the past, when leagues and conferences sat untouched for two decades, Timko wants this constantly evaluated.

He thinks the plan in Essex County is "an interesting concept that's a good example for the rest of the state."

If it works for Belleville and Bloomfield, for Weequahic and West Essex, then maybe the model can spread across the state and ease the friction between public and private schools.

If it doesn't work? That's a possibility state athletic officials would rather not consider.